Agency negligent in 1993 WTC blast

NEW YORK -- A jury Wednesday found the Port Authority negligent in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center.

The ruling provided a long-awaited victory for victims of the terrorist attack that killed six people and injured more than 1,000 eight years before the Sept. 11, 2001, attack destroyed the buildings.

The six-person jury in State Supreme Court found the Port Authority, the agency that owned the trade center, liable for not heeding the warnings of its security consultants about the dangers of such an attack in the public parking garage.

The jury, which was asked to determine fault, found the authority 68 percent responsible for the attack, and assigned the terrorists 32 percent responsibility.

A lawyer for the authority called the verdict "egregiously incorrect" and said the agency planned to appeal.

"The Feb. 26, 1993, attack on the World Trade Center was an act of terrorists, for which terrorists alone are responsible," Marc Kasowitz said.

Around noon on Feb. 26, 1993, a bomb hidden in a Ryder van equal to 1,500 pounds of dynamite blew up in the basement garage. The explosion blew a crater in the garage, shook the towers and sent smoke through the complex. In 1994, Muslim extremists were convicted in the plot. But legal delays held up the civil case for more than a decade.